


Iridescence

by diantimony



Category: Original Work
Genre: Epic Poetry, Gen, Poetry, Science Fantasy, alien - Freeform, poem, scifantasy, scifi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:54:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26598658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diantimony/pseuds/diantimony
Summary: "After something goes wrong with an interstellar spacecraft, three shapeshifting beings of light end up in a universe unlike their own, drifting through the stars until their ship crashes on an otherwise unremarkable planet. Things are made more difficult for these crystalline entities upon discovery that the laws of physics this world operates on are very different than the ones they are used to."First 2 chapters of this 16k science-fantasy epic poem are free to read. Currently running a kickstarter to publish the finished book and to produce an audiobook.





	1. Chapter 1

A universe overflowing with light,  
Black holes sprinkling the deep cosmos beyond,  
Drawing matter towards them, feasting on hues.  
Everything shimmers with so much colour:  
Cyans, magentas, greens, pinks and yellows.

Among these event horizons, white holes.  
Spewing matter drawn from another plane,  
These are the black holes’ total opposites.  
Even light may not enter these great beasts  
As particles continue to flow out.

These take the place of the suns from our world.  
From them, life is able to evolve, thrive.  
All usable energy comes from them.  
Plants feed off the light that they are given,  
While the animals feed off of these plants.

In contrast, black holes pull all to themselves,  
Hungry beasts that are to be avoided.  
Despite the danger life has adapted.  
The black holes are not useless in this realm,  
For some brilliant minds have put them to use.

A great sphere is built, reflective inside;  
Surrounding the black hole in its center.  
One single point on the sphere is open.  
A particle is aimed at this black hole,  
Narrowly missing it as it moves past.

The hole’s strong gravity pulls this atom  
And lends it some of its own energy.  
Potential energy turns kinetic,  
Speeding up the atom’s trajectory.  
It will hit the inside mirrors just right.

Once it does, the journey begins again.  
Faster and faster each revolution,  
Until, near light-speed, it is caught at last.  
The energy gathered from the black hole,  
Absorbed by a non-reflective panel.

The energy travels from transistor  
To transistor, stored until further use.  
Nearby starships stop by to refuel.  
One of these is experimental, new.  
This ship, first of its kind, faster than light.

Pioneers: sights set on a galaxy.  
None of their kind had been so far from home.  
The intergalactic drive was engaged,  
Ready to begin its maiden voyage.  
Distant stars calling to them; their new home.

In a moment, everything went downhill.  
Vast, quiet explosions within: error  
Coming from the generator’s space-drive.  
Within mere moments, all was still again.  
The ship was no more, though not lost for good.

The blast tore a hole in space-time, alas,  
For any observers, the crew was dead.  
For the most part they were right, damage done,  
Passengers taken by the tragedy.  
Yet some of those caught in the blast survived.

Flung to a universe far different,  
Empty, black, with only small points of light,  
Stars, to break up the neverending void.   
We see the ship floating aimlessly out  
Into space, light-years from anything else.

Ages pass. Once, shimmering black opal,  
Now, slowly fading paler and paler.  
A galaxy nears, a conglomerate  
Made up of gas, dust, and billions of stars.  
Its gravity pulls the ship to itself.

It is hard to say how much time had passed.  
To the inhabitants things grew slower,  
More sluggish, as power was diverted  
In order to be conserved, rationed out.  
Some see the galaxy rotate a touch.

The void grows crowded as it approaches,  
Tiny dots filling the sky all around.  
The crew, unable to keep track of time,  
Can only watch as the hull shifts from dark  
To white, shimmering hues nonexistent.

The vessel approaches a speck of light.  
Around it floats eight large spheres: its planets!  
The nearest to the ship: windy and blue.  
A gas giant, one of a few nearby,  
Its mass pulling the ship, veering off-course.

Its star emits light which fuels the ship,  
Yellow-white light split into a rainbow  
Upon impact with the exterior.  
Some color returns to its pale pallor  
As it feasts on the optical spectrum.

The surge in energy awakens it,  
Awareness returning to the ship’s mind.  
Though miniscule, not enough to move it  
On its own, not until it gains power.  
And yet, a new path is charted ahead.

Hungry for sunlight, the ship veers again,  
This time aimed directly at the source: Sol.  
Deprived for so long of their source of life,  
Few minds inside survived up to that point,  
Most having long faded away to dust.

On the ship’s journey to the system’s star,   
It passes a belt of scattered debris:  
Remnants of a planet that never was.  
Rock, crystallized iron, dust, gas, and ice  
Loosely connected by their gravity.

Before long, a small, rocky, red sphere nears.  
Around it are two tiny asteroids.  
This world is barren, devoid of features  
Beyond its mountains and polar glaciers.  
Its pale red color hardly attractive.

The ship hurtles toward the star once more.  
This close, water ice, formed on its surface,  
Begins to melt, sublimating to gas.  
Now, another planet stands in its way:  
Larger than the last, a drop of blue-green.

About this one orbits a large, white moon,  
A fourth of the size of its host planet.  
While small, the moon still dwarfs the spacefarers.  
Unable to maneuver as before,  
The ship almost impacts the satellite.

The celestial body tugs on it,   
Shifting its course directly to its host.  
The larger planet’s intense gravity  
Offers the craft no choice but to draw near,  
Atmospheric friction heating it up.

The following, over in an instant.  
After the interstellar voyaging,  
Eons of silence, and empty darkness,  
The moment is almost too quick to note.  
A soundless roar now, the craft makes impact.

Yet all is still on the planet’s surface.  
A vast crater surrounding the crash site  
Visible from space near the northern pole.  
Glacier and permafrost bore the impact,  
Sublimating the ice into vapor.

The crashed ship, still hot, sits upon a lake  
Formed from ice that was initially spared.  
Spacecraft once iridescent black opal,  
Now pale, with little remaining color,  
Lies in wait as what crew remains recoups.


	2. Chapter 2

The world makes several revolutions  
Around its star, while winters bring more snow.  
In time, the reflective crystals shine light  
Upon the craft, feeding it energy.  
Slowly, the ship makes a recovery.

The ship transitions into liquid form:  
Malleable, fluid, and moveable.  
The puddle splits into three lesser ones,  
Each tinged with a spectral hue of its own.  
First cyan, then magenta, then yellow.

The three puddles reform into cocoons,  
Where they spend another season waiting  
For the moment they will emerge, complete.  
Another layer of snow covers them.  
At winter’s height, they start to break open.

From the largest, huge claws tear through the shell.  
A stout, four-legged beast, neither pig nor dog,  
Nose of a bat and feet as human hands,  
Sticks its head through the opening it made.  
It pulls its stocky body through the hole.

Like the ship’s original appearance,  
The creature’s surface is iridescent;  
Blue, pink, and yellow light bounces off it.  
Though for this beast, cyan is dominant.  
It begins to peer around with four eyes.

Its gaze moves from the nearest cocoons here  
To the partly-cloudy skies above them,  
Blue peeking through the cover, out of reach.  
It is unable to see past the walls  
Of the impact crater surrounding them.

It watches as the other two emerge.  
A similar, pinkish being is next,  
This one longer, with a thinner body.   
It takes its time, unlike the first being,  
Taking care to avoid breaking the husk.

Finally out, it stretches those long limbs,  
Shaking off the recently-fallen snow  
From its rose-toned bristled back and neck manes.  
It too takes stock of the land around it,  
Disappointment filling its first few thoughts.

The blue creature locked eyes on the red one,  
Understanding somehow shared between them.  
Patiently, they waited for the smallest  
Of the voyagers to escape the shell.  
This one appeared in the worst condition.

The cocoon formed a single crack, then ten,  
Followed by countless of tiny fissures  
Littering its surface, until at last,   
They fell away with the wind, flaking off.  
A small yellow-tinged beast stands in its place.

All together now, they count their numbers.  
Three stand where there should be tens of thousands.  
The small one hangs its head down, shivering,  
Though from realization, not the cold.  
The other two also bow their heads low.

Mourning interrupted by survival,  
The three beasts are driven to journey far.  
This crater, white with snow and ice, useless  
For creatures that subsist off of color.  
Cyan leads the pack in scaling the walls.

They reach the top with no difficulty  
Despite spending those eons in stasis.  
Pausing to take a look at the landscape,  
Any hope there might have been of a home  
On this planet for them had been squandered.

Blinding, white surroundings spanned far and wide,  
Broken only by the sparse, barren woods,  
Thin black trunks sticking up out of the snow.  
Here, there is no color for them to eat.  
This world might just be this way everywhere.

The small one grows somber; the others join.  
Perhaps their destiny was to slowly,  
Hopelessly, dwindle into nothingness:  
Punishment for their kinds’ star-feasting ways.  
Headstrong, the cyan bids them to move on.

The cyan one’s hope has quickly faded  
Just as it had done for the two others,  
Though it believed a distraction welcome.  
It proposed a migration for the three:  
A journey in search of their sustenance.

As they travel, memories are restored.  
Their names are the first things to come to mind:  
Cerule for the cyan beast, the largest,   
Rozengard for the long, magenta one,  
And Kitrina, the meek yellow creature.

Other memories begin to flow back.  
Friends, family, colleagues, all those missing,  
Having long since faded to nothingness,  
A fate that reminds them of the dangers  
This world may yet hold, though its star brings hope.

Sunlight shines down upon the travelers,  
Bouncing around off of the snow and ice,  
And refracting through the water crystals.  
White light splits into a spectral array  
Made up of all of the rainbow’s colors.

These do not go unnoticed by the beasts,  
Who, as well as recalling their food needs,  
Remember the old name of their species.  
Boyani, referring to their own kind,  
An empire a whole universe away.

It is hard to think of anything else,  
With the surrounding lands devoid of hues.  
So far into their thoughts they had fallen,  
That they hardly noticed the setting sun.  
It was Kitrina who pointed it out.

The light was scattering across the sky,  
Light polarizing until red remained.  
Illuminated on a distance plain  
Sat a curious arrangement of rocks.  
The three decided to investigate.

At this point the sky’s intensity peaked.  
Though their kind preferred direct contact when  
It came to drawing color from objects,  
A shade this intense could not be ignored  
By the starved trio of pale wanderers.

Angling their bodies toward the sunset,  
The beasts closed their eyes and opened their mouths,  
As if the light were a physical thing.  
In terms of sustenance, this would do, now,  
As they felt energy return to them.

Before long, night fell, covering the land  
With its navy cloak of stars and the moon.  
The three moved on to a rock arrangement,  
And as they neared, those large boulders lit up.  
Each had a square opening on their sides.

Windows. From these, yellow rays of light shone,  
Dancing lightly on the snow-covered ground.   
These were dwellings, and within their flat walls  
Moved figures, casting shadows on the snow.  
The smaller buildings, unlit, seemed barren.

The three boyani cautiously approached,  
The wavering lights catch their many eyes.  
They draw near; the village remains silent.  
A crash from inside a house startles them,   
Cerule, the cyan, grunting in surprise.

The three scurry as quickly as they can  
Behind a small shed, away from the lights.  
A few moments pass by in dead silence,  
Yet no one comes out to investigate.  
Their attention turns to the shed itself.

Rozengard keeps watch while the strongest one,  
Cerule, scratches at the door, fruitlessly.  
More force is needed; he hurls his body  
At the door with all his might, breaking it.  
Kitrina, worried, looks around in fear.

Inside is a pile of reddish, round fruits,  
Sitting atop a yellow stack of straw.  
Both the fruits and hay are foreign to them,  
But the color, now that was familiar.  
Cerule and Kitrina begin to feed.

Rozengard takes their place when they are done,  
And by the end of the Boyani’s feast,  
The apples and straw became a steel-grey,  
Any shred of color torn right from them.  
These hues are poor, but better than sunlight.

Satisfied for now, they retreat away  
Into deeper woods beyond the village.  
The moon illuminates their path somewhat,  
Though is not as welcome as the sun’s rays,  
Monochromatic moonlight weak and faint.

When the village’s light is no longer  
Visible, they stop to rest til daybreak.  
They bury themselves deep in the snowdrifts  
Between the rough, dark trunks of leafless trees.  
Somehow, the white snow brings comfort, safety.

It sparks memories of the pale white ship  
That held them for eons on its journey.  
The crew had not had enough energy  
To experience fear or dread back then,  
Only a sense of calm serenity.


End file.
